HIST 2800 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Father Knows Best, Masculinity, Consumerism
17 May 2017
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Document Summary
Main point: historically, there has been constant shifting between the superiority of motherhood and fatherhood. Comprehending men"s experiences as fathers and how fatherhood has been culturally constructed over time is fundamental to understanding human experience. Historians have neglected the study of father until recently. The study of fatherhood could not be begun until feminist historians pushed to include the historical study of women, thus establishing the field of gender history in 1970s. Until gender became a crucial category of analysis, fatherhood (and masculinity) remained understood as a universal experience and was ignored by historians. What historians study is the social construction of fatherhood. Fatherhood is a social construction that changes over time in response to economic, political, cultural and social change. Fatherhood is not a stable cultural idea. The concept of the father as the family breadwinner and the mother as the homemaker, emerges in the 19 th century,
